


One Midsummer Sunset

by The Rose Mistress (Semilune)



Series: "The Bastard and the Hound," or Things Estinien is Terrified Krile Saw via Echo [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Adorable, Awkward Kissing, Awkwardness, Best Friends, Bisexuality, Boys Kissing, Bromance to Romance, Demisexuality, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, I'm so damn glad that "Bromance to Romance" is a real tag, M/M, Male Slash, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Slash, first same-sex experience, implied more than anything else, nervous Ishgardian giraffes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 10:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20722907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/The%20Rose%20Mistress
Summary: ☾ ✧ ☽“Would you—perhaps—would you kiss me?”It was as though the world had stopped.  Time stopped ticking.  Air stopped moving.  The wind outside surely stopped blowing.  Perhaps the war was ended, and Nidhogg had finally died, and peace was falling, at last, over every malm of Coerthas—“Pardon?”☾ ❅ ☽





	One Midsummer Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> I might add more to this later. Also please let me know if this is actually more mature than teen? I feel like it could be in a YA novel though and that's my barometer for these things.

* * *

❅ ☽ ✧ ☾ ❅

“The hour is late,” Estinien muttered, glancing at the clock on the mantel. Still, the twilight lingered. In the summer months, the sun stretched on. “I will need to leave the manor ere long.”

Even in the warm weather, his voice always caught like a growl in his throat. Why, he was uncertain. The sound it made was rough and grating, morning and night. People often made note of his timbre, the way it conjured gravel and smoke. Some were attracted. Some were repulsed. Aymeric never paid it any mind. He simply accepted it.

Now, Aymeric’s pale eyes flicked to examine the time for himself. He made a calm sound of agreement and set his half-finished cup of tea down on the parlor table. “Indeed,” he agreed, stifling a sudden yawn. He cast his surly brother-in-arms a mildly reprobative glance. “Go home, my friend. Ser Alberic keeps his vigil until you return, does he not?”

Estinien grunted in acknowledgement but slouched deeper in the settee.

A soft laugh spilled from Aymeric’s lips and he shook his head gently. “He is a good man—”

“I know.” Estinien tossed his head back against the couch; stared at the ceiling and sighed with frustration. “A very good man. One of the best men I have had the pleasure of knowing.”

“Surely he would wish to hear you say that,” Aymeric declared.

Estinien grunted and pressed his lips firmly together.

He could feel the way his friend studied him; the way his pale eyes almost left behind white-hot tracks. Blazing and wintry all at once. “Tell me, Estinien—if you will,” he began. His dark voice was solemn, but kind. “For what reason do you guard your sentiments so strictly?”

The words speared through him like a sword or a lance and he could feel his hackles start rising.

_For what reason, indeed_. Beyond losing all he loved to the wrath of a wyrmking? Beyond life as an orphan thereafter, besides? Aymeric knew those reasons, but he asked for his own; another effort to reach down into his torment—another attempt to grapple and pull him to the surface.

Aymeric, always picking and prying, wanting so badly to _untangle _him.

It was a lost cause.

“Sentiment is the gateway to despair,” Estinien muttered, defensive, pulling tighter. He studied a crack in the molding above the dusk-limned window. “Sentiment breeds _weakness_.” He clenched his jaw. “I would sooner throw myself into the abyss than allow _sentiment_ to control me.”

He felt the heat of Aymeric’s eyes, roaming over him slowly. “To allow it to control you would be a weakness, indeed,” he permitted. “But I would argue that sentiment itself is far from frailness—particularly sentiments like joy, or like love.” He took a thoughtful breath. “Feeling breeds infirmity in _reaction_, most often to aching. We lash out in pain and anger, or in sadness.”

Estinien knew all these things. He had no need for this _homily_.

“Treat me like a comrade, Aymeric, not a wayward child.” He tried to keep the bite from his voice, but it still came out sour. He tipped his head to face him, hoping his eyes at least held some thread of apology. “Well do you know how much I loathe being lectured.”

When Aymeric smiled, his eyes crinkled. They were almond-shaped and narrow and the color of ice or diamonds—but Estinien snorted at the thought, because Aymeric’s eyes were far finer than _diamonds_. Aymeric’s lips quirked in amusement and gentle affront. “Do you laugh at me?”

“Bloody hells, no.” It came out along with a bitter chuckle. “I laugh at my own damned self.”

That piqued his interest. “Perhaps my sermon struck a chord against your will?”

Estinien grimaced with all the force he could muster. “Shut it, Borel.”

Fury, Aymeric was smiling again. Smiling and ruffling a hand through his hair, black and glossy, like the feathers of a raven. Why in the name of Halone was the man so godsdamned _lovely?_ “I shall continue to hope that you listen, somehow,” said Aymeric, almost shyly.

Estinien huffed and stared at him sternly. “I always listen to you, you sodding dimwit.”

Aymeric grinned wryly, and—was he _blushing?_ “Thank heaven.”

He was. 

He was blushing. 

Aymeric was blushing, and Estinien was frozen.

The clock tick ticked on the mantel. The sun continued to set. The gentle summer wind whispered on the window and Estinien tried to breathe, to _move_, to do anything but _keep staring_. But he was transfixed by the flush on his face and the _something else_ in Aymeric’s eyes; something new and very brittle, gently rising, like a dove on the surge of a thermal or a white cloud of rainfall in the Highlands— “Estinien?”

The way he said his name made every ilm of Estinien prickle. “_What_.”

Aymeric took a thin breath. The tips of his ears were red now, eyes half-veiled by black lashes.

Hellfire burned in his blood as Estinien thought he almost looked _edible._

“Might I ask you—one thing else?”

Did Estinien dare to invite it, whatever was happening? Did he _dare?_

One thing was for certain. He had not the strength to look away.

The word fell from his lips before he could stop it. “Ask.”

Aymeric gave a breathy laugh—a small, lopsided grin. He managed to keep their eyes locked together despite his palpable embarrassment. “Stop me at once if this disturbs you,” he began, his voice laced with the shadow of a tremble. “Or if it comes at all as a surprise. But I,” his air hitched and stoppered. He cleared his throat once. Twice. Shook his head in evident humiliation. There was a long, tense pause as he struggled. “Words have ever been my strength above actions—” He took another, far more ragged inhalation. “And yet they fail me now.” He looked away then; closed his eyes tight. “I was a fool to think I could ask it—”

“Tell me,” Estinien muttered, desperate to be beheld again.

Long black lashes parted to reveal that light blue gaze of glittering sky and stardust, flicking to inspect him. But now, where the pale, fragile promise had been swelling, something heavy and glacial was sliding into place. “A wave of impulse overwhelmed me,” Aymeric was saying, jerking his head. “It would be remiss of me to mention, in far more ways than one.”

Estinien was ashamed of the way he wanted to yell at him; to take him by the shoulders and force him to _tell_. He took a thick breath instead. “Say what you are thinking.”

“I—” His mouth trembled. “If it interferes with our friendship—”

“_Nothing could do that_,” Estinien growled. Somehow, he was leaning closer regardless, hands still itching to _grab_. Aymeric flushed a bit hotter at the closing of the distance, perhaps a bit hotter at the look in his eyes. Well. Confusing as they were, doubtless Aymeric could see some measure of his feelings. He was always very skilled at reading a room.

Aymeric flung the words from his lips in a rush. “I never thought I would wish this,” he said quickly. “I am—rarely _comfortable_ enough to wish it, but—” The breath he took rasped in his throat, very dry. Aymeric wet his lips. “Would you—perhaps—would you kiss me?”

It was as though the world had stopped. Time stopped ticking. Air stopped moving. The wind outside surely stopped blowing. Perhaps the war was ended, and Nidhogg had finally died, and peace was falling, at last, over every malm of Coerthas— “_Pardon?”_

Aymeric gulped a small breath, making his shoulders rise and fall. “Forgive me,” he blurted, all the blood in his body surely rushing to his face. “I never should have asked—”

“_No._” 

He let himself take Aymeric by the shoulders then. He was slim, but powerful, corded with muscles; a knight with formidable gifts all his own. Aymeric said he never thought he would wish this, and as he held him in his hands, Estinien was struck by a parallel musing: That for all the wild gnashing of his desires, Aymeric was perhaps the only man that could tempt him.

And tempted, he most certainly was.

“Never have I done such a thing with a man,” he admitted.

“Never have I,” said Aymeric, at once.

They stared hard into each other’s eyes, and Estinien took a shaky breath. “If that is what you wish,” he said, perhaps his roughest, smokiest growl, “For you, I will grant it.”

Aymeric shook with a visible tremble; made Estinien quake through the link of his arms. He moved an ilm closer and hesitated. “If it feels at all—_wrong_—you must say so at once—”

Tentative, Estinien moved an ilm of his own. His long hair slipped across his shoulders; began to drape to reach for Aymeric itself. “Rest assured that I will pitch you aside if it feels _wrong_.”

Aymeric coughed out a laugh; searched Estinien intently. “Thank the Fury.”

Tick, tick went the clock on the mantel. The summer wind hushed against the window, and Estinien leaned their foreheads together. His black hair was exactly as soft as it looked, and he smelled like salt and grass—they had been training afield in the daytime. Estinien brushed their noses together and caught a whiff of the tea that Aymeric was drinking, sweetened with that syrup he liked. A gaze blue as the sky in the morning held Estinien through the curl of long black lashes and he let himself be taken in. Nothing in the world could be wrong if Aymeric beheld him like that. Nothing in the world could be anything but _right_.

He closed the distance.

Aymeric tasted like tea and birch syrup—along with the bitters of anxiety. Estinien kissed him very gently, and Aymeric timidly answered. Their mouths found a mesh, new and unfamiliar, and Estinien was amazed at how plush his lips felt; at how quickly his own body was reacting.

They parted.

“Ah. That was—” Aymeric exhaled, face still beguilingly rosy. He grinned and flushed harder and laughed without sound. “That was really very nice.”

Estinien was speechless, but he grunted in what he hoped was affirmation.

Aymeric looked at him in immediate concern. “Are you well?”

Estinien jerked his chin by way of a nod and shifted his hips. Gods buggering damn his all too rousable flesh. Merely one kiss and he was ready to pounce? On _Aymeric? Verily?_

The other’s eyes were flicking down, perceptive, and Estinien resisted the urge to fold his hands in his lap. In the splitting of an instant, calculations and understanding flashed behind his pale blue eyes and Aymeric raised his black eyebrows in candid surprise, locking their gazes together again. 

“Not one word,” Estinien grumbled, leaning away, completely bisecting them.

He could tell that Aymeric bit back a laugh from the way his eyes crinkled again. “You would deprive me of words in this moment—my instrument of choice?”

Estinien crossed his arms and took slow breaths, relieved to find that his body was calming. “I beg you would keep them to yourself,” he mumbled, knowing he would not.

“You are very good at that, you know,” Aymeric began, tongue flexing sure enough. He was reaching for his tea as if nothing at all had happened. “Very impressive, if I am honest.”

Estinien snorted at that. “I have had my share of practice,” he rumbled. “Far more than you have, you cloistered old ascetic.”

“Guilty,” Aymeric readily confessed, tipping his cup to his lips.

The sound of the door in the foyer, creaking open. Heels clicking, distant in the hall. A voice that lilted like a harpsichord and rustled like old damask curtains. “Aymeric?” A pause. “There is a pair of dirtied boots cast sidewise in the vestibule. Is Estinien there?”

Both young men straightened up at once and glanced toward the door to the parlor. 

“Aye,” Estinien shouted, knowing the sound would be distinct enough to carry.

A heartbeat of silence and a gentle hoot of laughter. “Praise Halone,” cackled the Vicomtesse, her voice very wry. “I knew no son of mine would make such a fine mess.”

✧ ☽ ❅ ☾ ✧

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> LET  
THEM  
KISS  
BY THE TWELVE  
AND THE LOVE OF HALONE  
  
Also thank you so much for reading, seriously! Yay for cute giraffes pining <3


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